


Anger Is A Killing Thing

by ashtraythief



Series: Underneath 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Mob, Derogatory Language, Minor Character Death, Murder, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtraythief/pseuds/ashtraythief
Summary: Jared is eleven when his mother is murdered.





	Anger Is A Killing Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Underneath verse. Takes place about 14 years before the main story. I’ve been working on this on and off for a while. I had planned on writing Jensen’s vacation first but Jared wanted to say his piece, so I had to give him his own story.  
> Title by Louis L’Amour
> 
> Many, many thanks to keep_waking_up for help and handholding and to ilikaicalie for outstanding beta efforts. All remainig mistakes are my own.

 

Jared didn’t believe in Santa anymore, hadn’t for years. He was eleven now, a big boy. He was going to middle school next fall and Daniel, who was a junior in high school, wouldn’t be able to call him a baby anymore then.

Just because he knew Santa wasn’t real didn’t mean his parents didn’t pretend Santa was the one bringing the presents. They still put out cookies and milk. Which was awesome, because they bought Jared’s favorite cookies and when he snuck down during the night to get himself a few, they couldn’t accuse him of stealing because it must have been Santa who took them. (Jared was pretty sure they knew anyway—parents had a way—but they didn’t say anything because of Christmas. Either way, Jared got cookies.)

It had taken all his willpower to stay awake in the dark of his bedroom until his parents had gone to bed, but Jared had always been tenacious. Now the house was quiet and he snuck out on the second floor landing, making his way towards the stairs.

When he heard a noise, he pressed himself in the doorjamb of Daniel’s room. The door of his parents’ bedroom at the other end of the hall opened, and his mom came out, old-fashioned billowy white nightgown flowing around her.

“...forgot the little one for Jared,” she whispered and then tiptoed down the landing and the stairs, a small present wrapped in red paper in her hand.

More presents! Jared grinned and watched his mom make her way to the tree and put the present on the pile that had to be Jared’s. He gleefully noted that his pile was bigger than Daniel’s.

Suddenly, his mom turned around and froze. Jared couldn’t see what she was looking at—it was under the landing. But then he heard heavy steps, something clanking, and then a shushing noise. Someone was in the house.

Jared wasn’t aware of making a sound, but for a second his mom looked up, directly at him. Then she looked back at whoever was in the house and raised her hands.

“Take whatever you want,” she said quietly. “I don’t care what kind of deal you made with my husband but I have children in the house. So just—”

“I have no idea who your husband is, lady,” a gruff voice said, “and I don’t give a shit about who’s in the house. You just stay there and be quiet.”

“I don’t like this,” another voice said, more nasal than the first. “No one was supposed to see us.”

That moment, his parent’s bedroom door opened again and Jared’s dad came out, gun in his hand. Then everything happened very quickly.

One of the intruders stepped into Jared’s line of sight, his mom gasped, and the intruder looked up the stairs. He saw Jared’s dad, and cursed.

“No!” Mom yelled and hurled herself towards the guy, gripping the hand holding the gun, which was already raised and pointing up the stairs. In horror, Jared watched them struggle.

The second guy let out a shout, then a loud shot rang through the house. Helplessly, Jared stood on the landing as his mom stumbled back. A dark red stain bloomed on her chest. Jared’s dad was frozen for just a moment, before he raised his own gun and started shooting back.

Jared scrambled up. He needed to get to his mom, help her somehow, but then the door behind him was ripped open and he fell back against his brother.

“What’s going on?” Daniel asked, voice still slurry from sleep, but Jared was already running for the stairs.

His father ran downstairs, chasing after the thieves, but he stopped next to Mom. He knelt down next to her, but he didn’t do anything. He didn't put a hand on the bleeding, like Jared had seen people do in movies. He didn’t talk. He just silently looked down.

Jared barreled down the stairs and almost crashed into his dad’s back.

“Jared, don’t look.”

But he couldn’t look away. Not from his mom’s face, pale and still, a drop of red on her chin. An ice cold fist wrapped around Jared’s heart, which was rabbiting away in his chest.

“Why aren't you helping her?” he yelled at his dad. “Do something! You need to help her.”

His dad turned to him. “It’s too late, son. Daniel.”

“No, no no no!” Jared was shouting, wasn‘t aware of the words coming out of his mouth, but he needed to drown out the sound of his own beating heart.

His father said something and then Jared was being picked up and Daniel was carrying him up the stairs. Daniel deposited Jared on his bed.

“Stay here,” he said, and his expression was hard. Then he turned around and walked out.

Jared followed him but stayed up on the landing, watching Daniel go down to where his father was still kneeling next to his mother.

“Is this your fault?” Daniel asked, voice angry. “Was this someone you didn’t pay?”

Dad shook his head. “I’ve never seen these men before. This was just a robbery.” He sounded like he couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“That anyone would dare to come into our house,” Daniel ground out and lashed out. The glass of milk and the plate with the cookies went flying.

Dad let out a harsh laugh that didn’t sound happy at all. “The Padalecki name doesn’t mean much in this town.”

“But you deal with powerful people!” Daniel bit out.

“This is a big city,” Dad said slowly. “I’m just a small fish. Certainly not important enough for people to know to leave this house alone.”

Daniel cursed. For the first time, their father didn't scold him for his language.

Jared sat on the landing, looking down at his mother. He knew his father broke the law, knew he sold guns to bad people. Mom had never minded, just asked him not to bring the business to the house. Jared had always thought his dad was a powerful man, a man with influence, a man people saw walking down the street and changed sides.

It seemed Jared had thought wrong. Men had broken into their house and killed his mother when she was just about to—Jared’s hands balled into fists. No. The men had done it. They had broken into the house because his father hadn’t protected them. And there was nothing Jared could have done. Nothing.

He looked down at his mom, at the red stain on her white dress, and he felt his hands shake, felt his whole body shake. And he couldn’t make it stop.

His hand flew forward on its own accord, smashing into the bannister. He didn’t register the pain but the shaking lessened. So he hit the bannister again. And again. He never wanted to feel like this again, this helpless. He didn’t know how he’d do it yet, but he’d become a better man than his father, a more powerful man. He’d never be scared in his own home again. He slammed his fist into the bannister, leaving a red smudge behind.

 

The police arrived an hour later. Jared saw their badges and the guns they carried openly, and he thought he wanted to become a police officer when he grew up. Then he could hunt all the criminals down and lock them up. No one would dare to hurt his family.

“Will you find the men who killed my mom?” he asked them.

There were two of them, one older with already gray hair and the other one younger with neat blond hair and a thin face. The younger one leaned down to Jared. “Kiddo, we’ll do everything we can to find those scumbags, okay?”

The old guy scoffed. “We don’t need to find them.”

“I already told you, this had nothing to do with my business,” Jared’s dad said from the door. “This was a random robbery, just like the one three weeks ago that happened here in the neighborhood.”

“Don’t expect me to take your word for it,” old guy said condescendingly. “We’re done here. If anything of importance comes to mind,” he said and gave Jared’s dad a heavy look, “you know where to find us.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” the young guy said to Jared, “but your daddy has a lot of enemies. When you live a dangerous life, bad things happen.”

Jared shook his head. “But he didn’t know these men!"

The cop shook his head, and Jared thought he looked sad. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything.” And with that, he left.

The cops never came back.

 

They buried his mom a week after the break-in. Jared’s hand had almost healed and he was wearing the suit his mom had bought him just a month ago for her sister’s wedding.

Jared’s dad came in when Jared was struggling with the tie. He sat on the bed and waved Jared over. Silently, he tied Jared’s tie, then he took him by the shoulders.

“You’ve got to be brave out there, Jared. Can you be brave for your mom?”

His mom wasn’t there to see him be brave, Jared wanted to yell. But he swallowed it down and nodded.

His father gave him a watery smile. “You look just like her when she was determined. It’s in your eyes, you know. You’re stubborn and strong, just like she was.”

Jared didn’t know what to say to that.

His father sighed and got up. “Let’s go.”

Everyone at his mom’s funeral was sad and said their condolences but no one did anything. No one talked about finding the men who’d killed her. Aunt Cecily, who was getting married this summer, yelled at Jared’s father that it was all because of him. But Jared knew his father’s only fault was not being powerful enough to protect his family.

 

After the funeral, things got bad. No one in their house could cook, so for a while all Jared ate was PB&J and take out. He didn’t care about the food though. He cared about Mom. He still expected to see her everywhere: in the morning when she would come to wake him, at the kitchen table where she’d stroke his head while putting pancakes in front of him, in the afternoon when Jared came home from school, and at night when she brought him to bed.

There was a hole in his life and Jared didn’t know how to live without her. He kept thinking about the two men and how they had taken his mom from him, how they had ruined his life and no one made them pay. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes, when he thought about it for too long, Jared got so angry he felt tears burning in his eyes. Then he started beating the bushes behind the house until his hands bled and throwing rocks at the blossoms of the cherry tree his mom had loved until the ground was covered in white.

In spring, his father hired Sam, a woman with kindness in a stern face. She cooked and cleaned and kept house. Daniel started skipping school to help out their father with his job. Jared knew that was a dead end but he didn’t know what else to do.

The anger was always there, simmering deep inside him. He picked fights in school, was snappish with his dad, and pestered his brother until he came after him. Sam intervened as best as she could but Jared was wily and smart.

For a while, Jared tolerated Sam but when she tried to tell him to eat his veggies and clean his room, Jared got angry and snappish with her too. She wasn’t his mother; she couldn’t tell him what to do. His teachers tried to talk to his father but he wasn’t interested. He just told Jared to behave. Jared didn’t want to behave. Jared had all this anger inside of him, this dark red tumble of emotions that kept him sharp and on edge, perceptive to everything that was going on, and any of it could set him off. And Jared let it.

Three months after the funeral, there was another break-in in the neighborhood. Jared’s father and his brother were sure they were the same men who had killed Mom but they never managed to get a lead on them. Jared’s belief that his father was a strong, powerful man continued to crumble. His dad wasn’t strong; he sat around all the time now, either sad or drunk. He couldn’t even find the men who had killed Mom.

So Jared got on his bike and rode to the police station. He told the lady at the reception desk his name and what had happened and asked to speak to the officer on the case. He didn’t cry when he talked about his mom. He’d cried once, the morning after it happened. But then he’d seen his dad fall apart and Jared had forced himself to stop. Crying wouldn’t help find Mom’s killers.

When he got to talk to the young officer again—his name plate said Officer A. Harrington—he told him about the new break-in.

Officer Harrington nodded. “Yeah, I know. Unfortunately we have no proof that these cases are even connected. We have suspects in the first robbery, but no real evidence. I’m sorry, kid, I wish I could do more.”

Jared stared disbelieving. “But you know who did it? Why can’t you just interrogate them? Make them tell you?”

“Sure, we asked them. But they didn’t tell us anything.”

“Then you make them tell you.” Jared didn’t understand. The police had _guns_.

“I can’t just make them tell me,” Officer Harrington said, sounding almost scandalized. “There are rules we have to follow, kiddo. We’re the good guys, and—”

“Good guys?” Jared yelled. He couldn’t believe this man. His mom was dead and they were doing nothing. “The good guys are supposed to kill the bad guys!”

Officer Harrington leaned forward, took Jared by the shoulder. “Okay, first of all, we don’t kill people, kid, we arrest them.”

“Then they get the death penalty. That’s the same.”

Officer Harrington shook his head vehemently. “No, it’s not. And it doesn't matter what your daddy might have told you; there are rules.”

“But the rules are stupid!” Jared shouted. “You know who killed my mom and you’re not doing anything! They shot her and you’re not doing anything. You’re a fucking piece of shit!”

Jared had never said the f-word before because his mom hadn’t liked it, but he couldn’t stop now. “A fucking piece of shit!”

Officer Harrington came around his desk, tried to say something but Jared just kept yelling at him, hitting at him, until his throat hurt and his head felt filled with cotton but the rage was still there. This man was letting his mom’s murderers walk.

“... a fucking useless piece of shit!”

Finally, Officer Harrington picked Jared up and carried him into a room with a table and a big window. Jared was still breathing heavily but he knew this was an interrogation room. He’d seen rooms just like it on TV.

“Listen up, kid,” Officer Harrington said and his voice was hard. “You need to calm down. I get that you’re angry and you miss your mom, but this won’t get you anywhere.”

Jared swallowed, tried to relax his hands balled into fists but he wanted nothing more than to hit Officer Harrington in the face. “They killed my mom. You _have_ to do something. Interrogate them until they tell you the truth!”

Officer Harrington let out a short laugh. “It’s not that easy, kid. I can’t just interrogate someone; I need a warrant to hold them. There are rules we have to follow, you understand?”

And Jared did understand. The police couldn’t help him. They had the badges and the guns but their power wasn’t real, not really. They couldn’t help him find the men who killed his mom. And Jared realized the police were just as powerless as his father. So Jared would have to find a way to do it himself.  


One day, Jared came home from school, angry at his math teacher for giving him a bad grade and threw his backpack into the corner.

“You know the rules, Jaybird,” Sam yelled from the kitchen. “Put your backpack away.”

The only person who’d ever called him that was his mother. Jared saw red.

“Shut up! Shut up, you stupid bitch, you’re not my mother!”

Sam came out of the kitchen, her face astounded and angry at the same time. “Jared—”

“NO!” Jared didn't know what he was yelling but he didn’t care. The anger was eating him up inside and he just wanted to hate and to hurt, wanted to make her suffer.

He kept yelling, and when Sam came over, he lashed out. She grabbed his wrists and let him yell. Jared shouted until he was hoarse and exhausted and slumped against Sam’s shoulder. His eyes were hot with tears and he furiously blinked them away.

“I know you’re angry,” Sam said softly, “but yelling won’t get you nowhere, you hear me?” She drew back and looked at him. “That anger in you—that’s good, that’s powerful. It gives you energy and persistence. But you can’t let it take over. It will cloud your judgment.” She tapped a finger against his forehead. “You have to be in control.”

“My mom is dead,” Jared said. That was the only thing that was controlling his life right now. “My mom got killed and my father is doing nothing. No one is doing anything.”

Sam nodded. “I know. And that’s not right. But what do you want to do about it?”

“I want to kill the men who killed her.” It was the first time Jared had said it out loud but he knew it was true.

Sam actually looked sad at that. “That won’t bring her back.”

“They don’t deserve to live. And these men will keep hurting others.”

Sam shook her head. “You’re way too young to think about death and killing. But whatever you end up doing in your life, your anger will only get you there if you don’t let it take over.”

Jared nodded. She was right. He had to be calm. And his mother’s killers had to die. Jared knew. Bad men were always bad. And the good guys had to kill them.

It was what his mom had believed in too.  


_“Jaybird, you have to go to bed.”_

_It was late. Daniel was out with friends and Dad was at his weekly poker game. Jared and his mom were alone in the house. Jared was supposed to be in bed but he had snuck out again. His mom was sitting on the couch, watching an old movie._

_“But it’s the weekend,” Jared said. “And you said we could watch a movie together.”_

_His mom laughed. “You’re not old enough for this movie.”_

_Jared couldn’t see why not; nothing was happening on the screen. Just three cowboys sitting around a train station._

_“Please,” Jared said, making big eyes at his mom. “You promised.”_

_His mom looked torn for a second, then she laughed. “Fine. It’s not like I didn’t sneak into the theater to watch it. I was actually as old as you are right now.”_

_Jared grinned in victory and sat on the couch next to his mom. Surreptitiously, he leaned in to her. He’d just turned eleven so he was too old to cuddle but he still liked watching movies together and leaning against her when he got sleepy._

_He didn’t get sleepy during this movie. After waiting for an eternity for something to happen to the guys at the train station, a train finally arrived. A guy got off. He told the three men waiting they’d brought two horses too many. Jared didn't get it until he shot them._

_“So he’s the villain?” Jared asked his mom._

_“No, Jaybird, he’s the good guy. The men he killed were the bad ones.”_

_Jared had a feeling he was watching something very grown up, so he trained his eyes on the screen, not wanting to miss a moment of one of his mom’s favorite movies._

_The movie went on forever, and Jared didn’t understand all of it. He didn’t understand why the widow went to bed with the man who had killed her husband. He didn’t understand the game Harmonica played. But in the end, when it was revealed what Frank had done, Jared understood._

_“Did you like it, Jaybird?” his mom asked when Harmonica was riding off into the desert, the widow bringing water to the railway workers._

_“Yeah, it was awesome. But really long.”_

_His mom just laughed. “You’ll have to watch it again when you’re older. Then you’ll be be able to appreciate that.”_

_“What’s it called?”_

_“Once Upon a Time in the West."_

 

Jared didn't want to play the harmonica but he would bide his time, grow up and learn to shoot, and then he’d kill the men who’d killed his mom, just like Harmonica had killed the man who’d killed his brother.

But Sam was right. His anger wouldn’t help him. Harmonica had been calm and focused, and that was why he had won. Jared would have to learn that too.

The school counselor had recommended therapy but Jared wasn’t sick, he was just angry. His brother said he should try boxing. Jared thought that would be a useful skill to have anyway. So Jared learned to box. He was a scrawny kid, but he didn’t give up. And when he turned twelve in summer he started to grow. His brother and his father were both tall; Jared would be just fine.

When Jared went to middle school after the summer break, he stopped fighting at school. It was hard but he had to keep his head down. He swallowed his anger, kept it inside until he could let it out against the sand sack. And if he sometimes still beat on a hedge, no one needed to know.

He badgered his father until he took him along to a shooting range. His father wasn’t home a lot these days and Jared had seen Sam reproach his father for not spending time with his youngest son. So when Jared told his dad that he never got to see him anymore, he caved.

Despite his failure as a business man, Jared’s father knew a lot about guns. Jared shut up and listened. He needed to know about guns.

Jared kept bringing home good grades and his father rewarded him with money and presents. Daniel grew resentful but Jared didn’t much care. Daniel was a hothead and he always got into fights. Jared knew that kind of rage but he was learning to tame his own.

Jared’s father was proud of him and he kept saying things like, “With your grades, you’ll be the first in the family to go to college.”

Daniel scoffed and said that college wouldn’t get them anywhere. Jared didn’t care much about college either but he stuck his tongue out at his brother on principle.

He never stopped looking for his mother’s killers. His brother and his father might have forgotten, but Jared would never forget  


It took him a long time to find them. Jared collected what information he could, articles in the newspaper about the other break-ins in the neighborhood. But it wasn’t until he was fifteen and made the right connections in high school that a few guys helped him break into the file room of the police department so Jared could get the names of the suspects in the first robbery.

Finding them took another half year. Jared had made contacts in the juvenile underworld, knew all the drug dealers, petty thieves, and kids with anger management issues in his school and the surrounding neighborhood. He was careful and never got into trouble himself, but he introduced people who needed each other and protected the nerds and the outsiders from the bullies in exchange for homework and essays that he traded to the same bullies for favors and errands. He always asked for a fee—never enough to piss people off but he made it clear he was owed a cut—and over time people just accepted that Jared was owed his dues.

By the time his sixteenth birthday came around, Jared had his fingers in every illegal operation surrounding his school without even being a blip on the teachers’—never mind the police’s—radar.

He was tall for his age too, shooting up like a weed, and the fight training made his shoulders broad and his arms strong. His father was still taking him to the gun range, giving him a new gun to try out every time Jared brought home an A. Jared wasn’t scared of any of the kids in school and he was careful. The other kids knew and respected him. Things ran smoothly. So Jared expanded his sphere of influence.

The first time he saw a kid in his school hack the teacher’s computers to get their math test two days early, Jared realized that this was the way of the future. He made sure to always stay on good terms with the computer geeks.

No one suspected him. He was nice and respectful to the teachers, did his homework and studied for his tests. Half the people working in his network didn’t even know they were working for him.

 

With all the money coming in, it was easy to expand business. And then, finally, he reached the circles his mother’s killers were moving in.

When a local gang of thieves finally told him where to find their rivals, Jared didn’t even consider telling his father and his brother. They were still running guns, still small fish in a big pond. Times had gotten tougher too, and Jared’s brother had already served a short stretch in prison.

Jared would be smarter than they were.

Over the years, he had picked up all kinds of useful skills, like picking a lock or hot-wiring a car. He didn’t have any trouble making it to the other side of town. He parked a few blocks away, wiped his prints off the car, and made his way to the house through backyards and alleys.

The two thieves were still working together. Their house was dark when he found a spot in the garden where he would be hidden by wild growing shrubbery. The urge to go in there and kill them immediately was strong but Jared knew that was stupid.

The first night, he just sat in the bushes, watching their silhouettes move in the house and fighting the impulse to run in and beat them to bloody pulps. When the sun was about to rise, he left. He pleaded a headache and stayed home the next day, telling himself to be smart about this. When he went back the next night, it was with a notepad and a pen, not a gun.

He watched the house for a week, figuring out their routine—when they left, when they got home, when they went to bed. They had day jobs now at a factory, but they still did the occasional breaking and entering to supplement their income.

Jared waited a whole week, then he did some breaking and entering of his own.

Logistics had always been a problem. There were two of them and he was alone. Despite all the people he knew that could help him out, he needed to do this on his own. So he decided to go with poison. Not enough to kill them, just to knock them out. He broke into their house and jacked their leftover food with ketamine. Then he waited.

It was surprising, how smooth it went. The two guys came home, ate, and fell unconscious in no time. Jared broke into the house again, then dragged them down to the basement and tied them up, duct tape covering their mouths.

His arms were shaking and he was sweaty from the exertion. The smart move would be to kill them right away and leave as soon as possible. But Jared couldn’t be smart, not about this. He wanted these men to know who he was, to know why they were dying. He’d never killed anyone before, but staring at their limp bodies, feeling the ever-present rage boil just below the surface, he didn’t doubt that he could pull the trigger.

He was right.

  


When he got home later that night, he felt calm for the first time since his mother had died. He put his bloodied clothes in the washer and then took a shower. The water turned rust colored when he washed the blood from his hands, neck, and face.

The next morning, Sam eyed him thoughtfully. “Anything you wanna tell me?”

Jared gave her a level look. “I think I finally figured out how to keep my anger under control.”

Sam raised her eyebrows but just nodded.

Jared’s father didn’t notice.

They didn’t really talk a lot. Jared did his own thing and his father, well, he was out most of the time. Recently, his father had made some new contacts and business was going well. He tried to take an interest in Jared, still gave him the sad look Jared knew meant he saw something that reminded him of Mom, but as long as Jared showed him a good test once a week, that was enough. He asked Jared about school, praised him for good grades, even gave him money when he had cash in his pockets, but he never really pried. Even when they went out shooting, they only talked guns and school.

Once, there had been a truly embarrassing conversation when he’d thought Jared had hooked up with a girl where he’d tried to tell Jared not to get someone pregnant while he was still in school. Jared already knew that wouldn't be a problem seeing how he was into boys, but he didn’t want to tell his father while he was still living in his house. That was a conversation that might not go well. He certainly wouldn’t tell his brother, who used the word faggot with annoying frequency.

But Jared was sixteen, and he had to think about the future. Now that his mom’s murderers were dead, he was restless. He’d thought he could finally be calm. Maybe even happy. But he wasn’t. The anger, his constant companion for the last five years, was still there. It was quiet but Jared could feel it buried deep down inside. It wasn’t gone. It was just… dormant. Before, it had been an angry impatience, pushing him to complete his goal. Now there was an aimless disquiet, with something lurking underneath, waiting to rear its head. Without the search for his mother’s killers to guide him, he didn’t know what to do with it.

When he went back to school the next week, one of the guys dealing for him came to him about a problem with another dealer. The dealer in question sold cheaper product but he cut it with nasty stuff. Two students had already landed in the hospital. The flash of red-hot anger hit Jared hard and fast, like it had never left him. His hands balled into fists and he didn’t have to think about what to do; he just called a few beefy upperclassmen who were part of a breaking and entering crew that Jared supplied with information on easy targets gathered by the nerd squad in exchange for protection.

They went with Jared’s dealer to have a little talk with the rival.  A few broken bones later, and Jared’s people were back on top. They thanked him, and with startling clarity, Jared realized this was what his anger was good for, that this was what _he_ was good at. Keeping order and punishing people. Someone needed to keep criminals in line, pick up where the police left off. And Jared knew that you couldn't do that without breaking the law. Besides, it paid much better than any legal job ever would and it gave him the power never to feel helpless again.

Jared thought of his father, how powerless he’d been. Jared would go a different way.

He watched the people around him, studied those who kept themselves out of jail successfully, and knew there was only one way to keep the cops off his ass. He needed to be legit.

So Jared went to their school’s counselor and asked about college opportunities and scholarships. He couldn’t be connected to his father's business; he would have to do this on his own. But Jared didn’t doubt that he could make it.

He was calmer now, but the anger was still there, seething deep inside. Driving him forward. But Jared was in control. He would be fine.

He applied to all the top schools in the country. In his application essay, he was candid about his father’s life and professed his desire to get out, make his own way, impact the world in the opposite way. He was accepted almost everywhere he applied, but only Stanford offered him a full ride.

Jared packed his bags for the California sun. Chicago would always be his home, but like the hero in every story he had to leave, train, and transform himself before he could come back home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can come find me on tumblr [here](http://ashtray-thief.tumblr.com/).


End file.
